Even when he wrote about unrelated topics, he still received praise and respect from his audience. He asserts that his career had earned him much respect among the learned and the illiterate. He acknowledges that he had achieved a lot as an artist and a poet (Tolstoy 26). Secondly, Tolstoy considers all the social achievements in one’s life as mere vanity. He concluded that given that death was inevitable, it was meaningless to acquire the material property. Based on the above questions, he concludes that all material gains are useless because they will not benefit the owners when they die. He seems to have already given up on expanding it, and he wonders how big it has grown without his contribution. The thought of impending death convinces him that there is no reason as to why his current estates should develop further. His ambitions to achieve the above goals were halted back by a mere imagination of impending death.

He visualizes himself owning and managing a number of estates and large tracts of land in the town. He questions how he will benefit from all his wealth once he dies. After acknowledging that he had no power over death, he chose to live a miserable life.Īccording to Tolstoy, the inevitability of death implies that all human accomplishments are in vain (Tolstoy 8). Tolstoy’s afflictions were attributed to his failure to define the true meaning of life and his fear of inevitable death. The book illustrates that Tolstoy contemplated suicide a number of times. In the book, he questions the reasons for humans’ existence. Through this, he was unable to acknowledge the value of life, and this caused him more misery. He began to refer to human endeavors as useless pursuits. From there on, he continually asked himself why he should pursue new things, yet death was inevitable. A Confession asserts that when Tolstoy was in his early forties, he lost the meaning of life and could not totally comprehend why he was living (Tolstoy 6).

War and peace and anna karenina